I glanced at the dogs. She didn’t seem to mind that they were somewhat exposed, huddled against the ruined wall the Undersiders were using for cover. One of the dogs seemed to be reacting badly to the lightning strikes, and was huffing out deep, very un-doglike noises each time one struck nearby.
“Listen,” I said. I flinched as lightning touched nearby. He was focusing more on a quantity of bolts than on the really heavy hits. Cleaning up the remanants of our defenses. ”Revel. Where did she fall? Or you could point me to anyone else that might be in charge?”
Parian pointed, almost absently. I couldn’t tell if she was dismissing me or if her focus was taken up by the stuffed goats. One took a lightning bolt, and she was patching it up and reinflating it within a second.
I took off. Again, I tried my armband. Static. Better than nothing, but not ideal.
I passed over the contingent of Yàngbǎn. Just getting near them, I could feel my powers swelling, my range growing, a crackling at the periphery of my attention.
And then it was gone. I was leaving them behind.
Eerie. Uncomfortable, even, with the recent reminder of how my powers were feeling vaguely out of my control. A boost in range wasn’t worth any surprises on that front. Bugs were almost useless here, more bugs wouldn’t make a difference.
Revel was in Dispatch’s company, alongside a cape in white, with a starburst worked into his helmet, radiating from the eyeholes and the gap for his mouth. She was lying down, using a piece of rubble for cover. She stirred as the ground rumbled, marking Behemoth’s rapid footsteps. Not a run. It felt off, saying something like him was running. But a lope, like how a gorilla might move, that fit.
“She conscious?” I asked, as I landed.
“She is,” Revel answered for herself. She seemed to have to work to focus on me. ”Weaver?”
“I found what Behemoth is after. Who can I talk to?”
Dispatch stepped out of the way, so the man in white with the starburst helm was free to act.
“Me,” the man in white said. ”I’m Exalt. Interim leader.”
“The Texas Protectorate leader.”
“Houston Protectorate, yes.”
“A local cape has gathered up a whole mess of energy. Enough to wipe India off the map. He’s planning to hit Behemoth with it, in two or three minutes.”
“It won’t work,” Exalt said.
“I know it won’t work. But he’s going to try, no matter what we do, and we need to distract the Endbringer long enough to give it a chance.”
He exchanged glances with the others.
Hurry, I thought. I was panting, my mouth thick with the taste of ozone. Even with my lenses, my eyes were watering from the peripheral smoke.
“Go,” Revel said. ”Expend it.”
Expend?
“It’s too soon,” Exalt said, “And we don’t have all the informat-”
“No time! Decide now!”
I saw him hesitate.
Swearing under my breath, I turned on my heel and flew away.
I was burning bridges, but that was a hell of a lot better than everyone here dying. How long did I have? I couldn’t even begin to guess. Two minutes? Eight?
Big difference between the two.
Fuck it. A waste of time. I’d burned precious minutes finding them, and they’d been too slow to help. I wasn’t sure I could work with the Protectorate, with the Wards. Not if they failed us like this at this crucial juncture.
Assets. Didn’t have enough resources here. We needed to pull something decent, something that could…
I had no fucking idea. How were we supposed to keep Behemoth sufficiently still and distracted, controlling a detonation that had the potential to level a continent?
The Chicago Wards were arriving, minus Wanton. I signaled them with bugs to fine-tune the direction they were traveling, putting them en-route to the Undersiders.
And behind me, as if they were feeling guilty, Exalt and Dispatch were giving chase, rapidly catching up. Dispatch moved in bursts of speed intersped with moments where he ran at a normal pace, Exalt flew with Revel in his arms.
I found the Yàngbǎn and approached. They were reacting even before I’d landed, turning, hands raised to attack. There were twenty of them, or close to.
“English?” I asked the Yàngbǎn.
They were silent, almost cold in response.
They were nationalist capes. I was a foreigner, maybe an enemy by default.
“English, please. This is it, the deciding moment. Your help, it’s… it’s essential.”
No response.
Exalt, Revel and Dispatch were slowing as they approached me. I drew an arrow in the air with the few bugs I had left and pointed them to the Undersiders. They ignored the instruction, setting down just behind me.
“Weaver,” Exalt said. His voice was grim. ”They aren’t allies.
“We need all the help we can get,” I said.
“The Yàngbǎn pulled an assassination attempt on Chevalier,” Exalt told me.
My eyes widened.
“A traitor among us,” a young man spoke, his voice badly accented. Another snapped something at him, and he responded in Chinese.
None of the heroes replied. I couldn’t bring myself to speak, couldn’t think of a single thing to say that would be remotely diplomatic, in the midst of this.
“We do need all the help we can get,” Exalt said, not taking his eyes off the group. ”You want to make amends?”
The English-speaking one translated for the others. I fidgeted nervously. How many minutes, now? Why hadn’t I asked for more time?
“Shì de!” one cried out.
“Shì de!” the group called out in unison.
“That’s a yes,” Exalt said. He was already turning, taking flight.
Twenty Yàngbǎn members. Exalt. A dazed Revel. Dispatch. The Chicago Wards. The Undersiders. Citrine. Me.
The sum total of our defensive line.
And Behemoth was getting too close. A hundred and fifty feet? A hundred and twenty? He was swiftly approaching the hundred-foot mark we’d been warned about, where he could close the distance with a single leap.
There were so few heroes capable of holding him back. He was covering ground at twice or thrice the speed he had been earlier, and the Undersiders didn’t have the means to know. They were on the ground, blinded by the ambient smoke and the dust of the hundreds of buildings that had fallen across the city.
“Run,” my bugs communicated. But nobody responded, nobody reacted. Too much ambient noise.
Run, they spelled out words, shaping letters with their bodies. Too much smoke.
I bit them, stung them, and that spurred them into motion. Maybe too late.
He wasn’t even a full city block away from them. Only a few half-destroyed buildings stood between him and the Undersiders. They were still sorting themselves out, getting mounted on the dogs for a retreat, but it was too little.
Behemoth leaped. Not the monumental leap he’d used early in the fight, but a leap nonetheless. He landed in the midst of a building, knocking much of it over, and the impact was enough to bounce Citrine off one dog, to knock Tecton over.
The Endbringer had closed half the distance. A mere twenty feet separated them from his kill aura, if that.
I landed beside Citrine, helping her up, using my legs and the antigrav to try and help her onto the dog’s back. She kicked her heels the second she was seated, shouted an order I couldn’t make out.
The dog, scared, growled and held its ground against Behemoth.
“Rachel!” I screamed the word. ”Call him!”
She whistled, sharp, and it seemed to break the spell. The dog lurched around and ran, nearly knocking me to the ground.
The Yàngbǎn were landing in the Undersiders’ midst, joining the fray. I could feel my power swell, my range increasing by one block, two…
I could sense the underground complex, where Phir Sē was. He swatted absently at the bugs that had been left
behind, uncontrolled in my absence.
“Wait,” I communicated to him. ”Almost.”
Either we’d manage this in the next few minutes, or we’d be dead and it wouldn’t matter.
I called the bugs, leaving only enough to speak to Phir Sē.
The Yàngbǎn opened fire with lasers, and erected forcefields to ward against the lightning bolts. Golem’s hands rose, faster with the Yàngbǎn’s help, but too slow to make a substantial difference. Tecton’s walls, similarly, couldn’t rise high enough to block Behemoth’s line of sight. The power boost would increase his tinker abilities, but it wouldn’t empower the results of his technology.
Citrine’s power intensified in the depth of the yellow-gold light, in size. Grace shimmered, Cuff was better armored, Annex covering more ground.
Why couldn’t the Yàngbǎn have helped like this sooner? From the very start of the fight? Damn people. Damn them all, for their idiocy and selfishness and their small-mindedness.
This wasn’t enough.
Behemoth reached out, and lightning plowed through our ranks, left to right. The Yàngbǎn forcefields fell in the lightning’s wake, and Tecton was struck from his bike. Cuff was too far back, unprotected, dropped in an instant. I ducked low, covering my head, as it crashed against a quadruple-layer of forcefields the Yàngbǎn had provided. One of them was knocked prone as the last forcefield shattered.
A stray Yàngbǎn member, too far to the right, was knocked to the ground. She started to struggle to her feet, then collapsed a second later.
Revel flew to the injured Wards, but didn’t have the strength to stand. Instead, she raised her lantern, ready for the next strike.
The Yàngbǎn hadn’t even raised their forcefields again when he hit us with lightning once more.
Revel absorbed the initial impact, sucking it into her lantern.
I wasn’t close enough to benefit. I saw the lightning twist in the air as Behemoth swept his hand out to one side, striking another two Yàngbǎn members, just out of the lantern’s reach.
Dispatch appeared next to me and other Yàngbǎn members, and in an instant, everything went still, quiet. My ears roared with a high pitched whine. My breath sounded too noisy, my heart beat so fast I couldn’t even see straight.
Like Clockblocker’s power extended a temporal protection, almost impossible to break, Dispatch’s power seemed to do the same, even if he was effectively achieving the opposite, accelerating us with the outside world moving at a snail’s pace.
The effect ended just as Behemoth moved on to other targets. Another Yàngbǎn member was struck down.
And, inexplicably, he continued his lightning strike, carrying over to the far end of the street.
There was a yelp, and I could see Imp, all at once, sheltered by a wall that was shrinking in size with every second the blast continued. She held the Yàngbǎn member who’d strayed too far away from our main group in her arms.
He’d seen her. Sensed her. And now, behind a wall no more than three feet high, she had nowhere to run.
I pushed past Yàngbǎn members, unstrapping my flight pack, tearing at the parts that fed down to my gloves, to get it off. If I could get it to her…
I couldn’t. I stopped, the pack in my hands. The lightning would break the thing before it could carry her away.
If Grue’s alive, he won’t be able to forgive us for letting her die.
Citrine drew a yellow glow around Imp, and the lightning fizzled as it passed the perimeter.
The Endbringer switched to fire, and it passed through. It seemed to halve in intensity, but that was enough. I could hear Imp scream in alarm and fear.
He advanced a step, and the fresh angle afforded her even less cover. His kill aura… if he simply ran forward a few steps, he’d murder us all in seconds.
But Golem’s hands held his legs. One had sunk deep into a pit, hands of pavement gripping the knee, melting at the close contact, even as others rose to reinforce. The other leg was raised, but held in much the same fashion.
Imp screamed again as he directed another wave of flame her way. It was a scream of pain this time.
Foil shot him, but he didn’t turn away from Imp and the Yàngbǎn member. Instead, one hand stretched out, casting flame towards her. The cloth goats blocked it, and were promptly set aflame. He maintained two columns of flame from his hands, one directed at Imp, one at Foil and Parian.
Revel launched a mess of spheres at his chest, and the surviving Yàngbǎn followed up with lasers. Behemoth simply maintained the assault, almost uncaring as the lasers and disintegration spheres ate into his torso. Negligible damage, in the grand scheme of things.
“Fuck it,” Regent said, his voice almost inaudible. He was looking at Imp.
“Regent,” I said. When he rose to his feet, I raised my voice, “Regent!”
“Hey Shitcrumb!” Regent hollered, backing away from cover. ”Easy-”
Behemoth dropped the flame attack. I could see Yàngbǎn members raising forcefields as he reached out, casting a bolt of lightning in Regent’s direction. The forcefields did nothing, not even softening the blow in any measurable way.
Regent was snuffed out, dead.
A small sound escaped my mouth.
But there was no time to react. Reeling, grieving, it would cost us. He’d done what he did for a reason. The antigrav on the flight pack kicked in, I waited until it started to drag me, then let it go. It skidded across the gap, across the road, to Imp. She caught it, and I controlled the motion of it to drag her away.
“Retreat!” I called out, and my voice was strangely ragged. ”Citrine, cover! We need forcefields too!”
And Exalt. We needed whatever power he could bring to the fore.
Eidolon landed between us and Behemoth.
He said something I couldn’t make out, then raised his hands.
A forcefield, taller than Behemoth, separated us. For seconds, Behemoth was muted. He swiped his claws at the forcefield, fell short. He couldn’t advance, with the way Tecton and Golem had him held with one leg buried up to the knee, couldn’t reach far enough to touch the forcefield.
One claw dashed a hand of asphalt to pieces. Golem started to raise another to replace it, but Behemoth torched it, turning it to a liquid or a glass. Something flat, shiny.
We pulled ourselves together. I changed Imp’s direction, brought her to us. She let go, and the thing careened dangerously, striking the ground a little too hard.
She crouched by Regent, touched his throat.
She shouted something. A string of swear words, insults aimed at Regent.
“Come on!” I screamed the words at her. It took me a second to get the flight pack going again. I steered it, like a fish on dry land, towards her, as Rachel hauled me up onto a dog’s back.
“Weaver,” Phir Sē said, almost half a mile away, still in the room with the monitors, “If he advances any closer to me, I won’t have any option but to strike.
“Wait,” my bugs communicated.
Reluctantly, Imp reached for the flight pack, hugged it to her chest. Not the best option, given the options I had for controlling it. Still, it was a way to get her moving towards us.
Some heroes were pelting Behemoth from another direction. So little, in terms of effect, but it was a distraction.
We needed to regroup. Needed to form some kind of plan, however haphazard.
Fuck it. Foil had the facemask… who else? Citrine and Foil… the back of the head of the dog they rode. Dispatch wore a helmet… but I could use bugs to draw an arrow on the ground. That left Annex, where the hell was he? My bugs couldn’t sense him.
My eyes could. In the midst of the smoke, I saw the bike Tecton rode was lighter than the rest. Annex was inside it.
I pointed them in the same direction I’d sent the others.
We converged on the same point.
“Dispatch!” I called out. ”Huddle!”
He reached the midst of our group, and his power surrounded us.
Silence, stillness. The buzz of my power at the periphery of my consciousness was a fraction of what it might otherwise be, limited to the bugs that crawled in the recesses of my costume. There was only the press of bodies, two dogs and all of the rest of us in an area smaller than my jail cell.
I tried to speak, and emotion caught my voice. It threw me, as if it didn’t match how I felt, didn’t match the composure I felt like I had.
Nobody cut in, nobody used the silence to venture an opinion.
When I did speak, I did it with care, shaping each word, speaking slowly, so I wouldn’t embarrass myself again. ”How long?”
“This?” Dispatch asked. His voice was low, grim. ”This many people? Those dogs? Four minutes. Maybe two, if we’re all breathing this hard. Once we run out of air, I gotta cut it out.”
I nodded.
Think, think.
“Sorry about your pal,” Tecton said.
I shook my head. A denial? He was important to me, but… what, then? Was I wanting to focus on the situation?
“Not now,” I said, sounding angrier than I meant to. ”Need a plan.”
“A plan?” Dispatch asked. ”We run. We pray.”
“Last I heard, Scion was nowhere near,” Foil said. ”Nobody to pray to.”
“Not funny,” Dispatch said. ”This isn’t the time to fuck around on the subject of God.”
I shook my head again. Plans. Options. I had an idea, half-formed in my head, and I couldn’t bring it to the fore. Some missing element.
“Rachel. You wanted revenge on that motherfucker?”
“Yeah,” she said, “Leviathan killed my dogs.”
“Behemoth killed your friend,” Tecton added.
“And Leviathan killed my dogs,” Rachel said. ”They both pay.”
“They both pay,” I agreed. ”What the hell’s Exalt’s power?”
“Aerokinesis and telekinesis,” Dispatch answered me. ”But he spends a charge, takes a day or days to build it up again.”
Which explained why he hadn’t helped. Fuck.
“Eidolon’s power… he chooses what powers he gets?”
“He gets the powers he needs,” Dispatch said. ”He can be receptive to new ones, hold tighter to ones he wants to keep, but that’s it.”
I nodded. He was at the mercy of his passenger, it seemed.
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